TMM Day 7

I adore my therapist. I don’t know what I would do without her. She helps me understand things, and helps me work my way through things. It’s unusual to leave an appointment with her without feeling a thousand times better about something.

Yesterday, she helped me work my way though feeling frustrated and angry at how the self-help books I’ve read recently portray depression – as something you can just power through, as something that just causes you to make excuses.

If it were only that simple.

My therapist helped remind me that there is situational depression, which may be helped partially through some of the positive behavioural habits that these self-help gurus wax poetical about. But that there’s also the depression that is the chemical imbalance in one’s head, that does require medication to help regulate.

She put it some way that I don’t normally think about – people understand that those who have diabetes need insulin to make their bodies work properly, it’s similar with depression. I’m not putting it as eloquently as she did, but that’s the main gist of it.

For a long time I struggled with accepting that I needed medication, even as I was taking it. It was hard to come to grips with the fact that I needed help to feel normal. Sometimes I still struggle with that. I never really looked at it from the perspective that people with other physical medical issues also need daily medication.